V Magazine’s “Plus-Sized Issue”

For their Spring issue, V Magazine is dedicated to showcasing plus-sized models in an effort to illustrate that oh em gee, plus-sized models are beautiful too!

Just like the first ever “All Black” issue of Italian Vogue from a while back, I liked the idea and I was interested in the final product that the respective companies were going to show its readers but I don’t think these issues are going to do shit in the grand scheme of things. Given the opportunity, I would love for there to be a first “All Asian” issue of any Vogue, but I think these attempts to try and “enlighten” the masses — by attempting to say that beauty is everywhere — are superficial and won’t make a dent at all in what truly matters.

Taking the example of the Black issue and the plus-sized issue of the magazines, it’s problematic that there needs to be a separation of Black models and plus-sized models from what we regularly see in magazines already. Like, they can only exist intermittently in all our regular issues, but unless we dedicate a whole “lookit me!” issue with only models of a certain look, they don’t fit into our standard beauty ideals. They have to appear in every single issue and without any head honcho editor pointing out in glee, “Look! Look at how progressive we are! Look at this Black model! And this plus-sized one! Oh and we’ll throw in an Asian one too!”